


Phantasmagoria

by Imagining_in_the_Margins



Category: Suburban Gothic (2014), Suburban Gothic - Fandom
Genre: Awkward Flirting, Awkward Sexual Situations, Awkwardness, Drunk Sex, F/M, Fluff and Humor, Funny, Hangover, Humor, Mild Smut, One Night Stands, Raymond POV, Self-Insert, Sex, Sexual Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:00:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27254572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Imagining_in_the_Margins/pseuds/Imagining_in_the_Margins
Summary: Raymond is pretty sure that the girl he spent the night with was not of this world.
Relationships: Raymond Wadsorth & Reader, Raymond Wadsworth & You, Raymond Wadsworth/Reader, Raymond Wadsworth/You
Comments: 1
Kudos: 15





	Phantasmagoria

There are some things you just shouldn’t think about in public. For example, when you are out with a friend sitting in a very public cafe and trying to catch up after a disastrous house party, you should not be thinking about the girl you fucked the night before. Partially because hiding an erection while hungover is way harder than it should be, and partially because it makes it impossible to hear anything that is being said to you.

But I couldn’t _not_ think about her. Maybe it was just the fact that I hadn’t had sex in ages, but there was something about the experience I’d had the night before that I just couldn’t shake. It didn’t make any rational sense — nothing about the sex had been different from sex with any other girl who had been unfortunate enough to fuck me. And yet, every time I so much as blinked, my vision was wracked with images of her. 

Just then, I’d flashed back to the way her jaw had dropped open as a loud, desperate moan fell from her lips. Her hands had been splayed on my chest as she straddled me, only barely keeping her balance as her hips rolled with impossible precision each time. She was so unbelievably fucking beautiful, it hurt to think about her for too long.

I could hear her, though, a siren calling out to me from my own memory with a raspy voice. Her vocal cords had been practically shredded from the constant use, but she never stopped. Every time she slowed down, I’d grabbed her hips and brought them down harder just to see her response. She’d never disappointed me.

Her skin had felt like velvet, but even that was nothing compared to the way it had felt when I was inside her. It was probably just my mind playing tricks on me, wishful thinking to convince myself that I deserved to fuck her in the first place, but I swore I could remember her coming on my dick while she rode me. And I definitely, _definitely_ remember what it felt like when I finished. Not just because it was seriously the best orgasm I’d ever experienced in my life, but because she’d reacted to it like she could feel it herself. Like she got off on the mere idea of giving me pleasure.

To summarize, I’d found the perfect woman the night before, and I couldn’t remember her name. Even worse, I was pretty sure she was dead.

“Did you hear anything I just said?”

The question brought me back to reality, albeit briefly. I considered taping my eyes open to stop the images from returning for a minute, but I also wasn’t convinced it would stop them.

“Yes. I mean, no. I don’t know,” I sighed, rubbing a tired hand over my aching temple. “I’m sorry, I’m just distracted. There was this girl at the party last night and—“

“Stop. A girl? Who?” He asked.

I tried to pretend like his incredulity wasn’t insulting. Of course, it looked even worse for me when I had to give my answer.

“I… don’t know her name.”

“You don’t know her name?” There was a slight chuckle when he asked that time.

I wasn’t laughing, though. In fact, the frustrated groan that rumbled through me was pretty much the exact opposite of laughter. Then when I spoke, it was through a whine. “No, and I can’t stop thinking about her. It’s driving me insane.”

“That good, huh?” He said with a little grin that assured me he was missing the point. Granted, I could hardly explain to myself what had happened, much less another person.

“No, it’s not that. I mean, she was great!” The hand that had been massaging my temple moved to cover my face from the somewhat embarrassing admission. I sounded like an idiot in love with a one night stand. “She was amazing, actually. That’s part of what’s freaking me out.”

“What’d she look like?”

At first, I was convinced he was just trying to disprove her existence altogether, but then I waved that worry away. I mean, I was trying to prove to myself she didn’t actually exist, so we were already on the same team.

“I’ve never seen her before. She’s definitely not from around here.” The perks of a small town.

“She’s probably just visiting,” he shrugged. Like there could ever be such an easy explanation when it came to me.

Maybe he was right. But my brain was telling me he wasn’t. There was simply no way she was real. I could still remember the feeling of her in my arms, and I’d smelled her perfume as I drifted to sleep. But when I woke up, my arms had been empty, and the sheets had been cold. Although I could still smell her on the pillow, even that quickly faded.

“I don’t know, something felt off about it,” I explained solemnly, “This morning when I woke up there was like… no evidence she was ever there.”

During my emotional breakdown regarding the death of the perfect woman, my friend had apparently figured out my theory.

“Are you trying to tell me that you think you fucked a ghost?”

He was not amused.

“I don’t think I fucked a ghost, man, I _did_ fuck a ghost!” I shouted back in a poor attempt at a whisper. His laughter quickly followed, which did not help me feel any less insane. I still believed in my theory, though. There was no way not to.

“You’ve fucking lost it,” he mumbled with a shake of his head.

“Listen, you know I can see ghosts. You know I can interact with ghosts. Why is it so crazy to think that I could fuck a ghost?”

He gave me that little shake of his head that people always did when they halfway believed me. Over the course of our friendship, enough had happened that he couldn’t ignore it, but he wasn’t entirely sold on the supernatural yet. Or, at least, he wasn’t sold that I wasn’t just an idiot.

“Because you were blackout wasted, dude. It was probably just some ugly bitch from the party and your brain is trying to protect you.”

A theory that I had not considered. It only took me one blink to realize he was wrong, though. “That’s the thing! She wasn’t ugly at all!” That time my shout wasn’t hushed at all. A few people turned to me in the cafe, but their giggles didn’t bother me. If they had seen her, they would think she was worth shouting about, too. “She was like… the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen! _Way_ too hot to want to fuck me!”

“So you got lucky,” he objected.

“You’re not listening to me.”

I saw it on his face, the logic and the skepticism going back and forth just like his head as it lolled to the sides in contemplation. When his brows furrowed, I thought I might finally have won, but then he just cringed. 

“Aren’t ghosts like… cold?”

“She definitely wasn’t cold. It felt like I was on fire when she touched me,” I enthusiastically answered.

He chuckled a little bit, but he at least continued to entertain my concerns. “Did she look dead? Like how would she have died?”

“Okay so that’s what I was trying to figure out. I couldn’t see anything on her but she had this big ribbon around her neck and—“

“Stop.” He interjected, preventing me from finishing my very promising argument as well as the reminder that ghosts didn’t always have to look dead. Still, I begrudgingly followed the instruction. “… Are you about to talk about that Shel Silverstein story about the woman who held her head on by a ribbon?”

“First of all, it’s Alvin Schwartz.” I corrected with a hand in the air to signal my offense, “Second, if you were a ghost, wouldn’t you want to hide your decapitated head?”

My friend shook his head, but that action, paired with my words, only furthered my thoughts on the conspiracy. I gasped as I added, “What if she heard the story and that’s where she got the idea?”

“Or, get this, she was wearing a costume… and it included a ribbon.” 

All the talk about the ribbon got me thinking, and the more I thought about her, the clearer the memories became. Of course, I couldn’t guarantee that I wasn’t just making them up as I went along, but there was one part that seemed rather vivid.

“She kept trying to get me to touch her neck!” I said, bringing my hand to my own neck to demonstrate. All it got me was a disapproving roll of the eyes.

“So she wore a ribbon for a costume, and she’s freaky,” he droned.

“Or she was trying to scare me!”

“You’ve definitely lost it.”

And apparently, that was meant to be the end of both the conversation and the cafe excursion, because he promptly stood up from the table without another word. Naturally, I followed, continuing my argument with an enthusiasm that strongly contrasted his growing disinterest.

“Why would I make this up?!” I shouted, not even pretending to whisper anymore as we exited the outdoor seating.

Unfortunately, he followed my lead, speaking back just as loudly as he said, “Fine, then did you use a condom?”

A normal person might have felt at least a little bit of shame, but I guess I had never really been normal. Instead, the question just stumped me. “I don’t know, why?” I mumbled with waning confidence.

“Did you wake up glued to your sheets?” He said with a completely unnecessary gesture over his crotch.

“No…”

“Okay, so where did it go, then?”

I sighed. Not because the question made me realize anything, but rather because the question brought up a number of unpleasant memories not at all related to the night before. “I didn’t think about it, but listen, I also don’t really want to get into ghosts’ ability to manipulate semen, okay?” I whined, and when his face scrunched in confusion, I shook my head in response. “Don’t ask.”

That was the mortifying end to an exhausting conversation. I wish I could say that we simply parted ways or changed topics, but that wasn’t what happened.

No, as I leaned on the metal fence closing in the seating we’d literally just left, I felt a brief tap on my shoulder. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end as a cold chill ran down my spine, and before I could even turn around, two syllables crashed into me like the cymbals wielded by those terrifying monkey toys.

“Raymond?”

Slowly, I turned to see the girl from the night before, staring back at me with those hauntingly beautiful eyes.

And I fucking screamed.

Her hand jerked back. With wide eyes and a confused, awkward smile, she turned to my friend who was already trying to find a way out of this conversation that hadn’t even started.

“Is he okay?” She asked in a whisper, like I wasn’t even there.

In a way, it felt like I wasn’t. It felt like I was a third person viewing the train wreck of an interaction from some safe location.

“Absolutely not,” my friend answered for me. I would have been mad if it hadn’t also been true in the moment. Thankfully, he immediately turned to leave. “I’ll… let you two talk.”

I was grateful he wouldn’t witness any more of my humiliation, but also petrified at the realization that I had literally no idea how to talk to this woman. So, naturally, she spoke first.

“Well, you certainly know how to flatter a girl.”

She shifted as she spoke, and in doing so, she successfully captured my attention… As if I hadn’t been laser-focused on her before. But then my thoughts were lost with the way her hands came up to fix the scarf that hung haphazardly around her neck.

When I didn’t respond, she continued, “I didn’t mean to scare you, I just wanted to apologize for running off so early. I was in a bit of a rush and I didn’t want to wake you up.”

But her voice was so beautiful that I still couldn’t focus. There was an unsteady crackle that ran through it, and I wondered if it was always like that or if it was just the result of her wearing out her vocal cords with the moans playing on loop in my brain.

“Oh. Right. It’s fine,” I grumbled, running my hand through my hair that was still messy from her grip on it. She must have seen me reliving the memory, because she smiled at the gesture.

“I had fun though. I’m hoping the scream wasn’t indicating that you didn’t…”

“No! No, not at all!” I practically shrieked, which thankfully earned a laugh that seemed to be shared with me rather than aimed at me. I’m pretty used to recognizing the second one. But like I said, by all accounts, she was the perfect woman.

“I just… wasn’t expecting to see you.” It was the vaguest way I could explain my thoughts without lying or stating my theory that I still wasn’t entirely sure was wrong.

“Yeah, I kind of got that feeling,” she whispered with a shy glance down to her feet. It was cute for a total of five seconds before she made eye contact again. A smirk had spread over her features as she took a step closer to the fence separating us. “I mean, it’s not like you thought I was a ghost or something, did you?”

“… No?”

What else could I say? She clearly already knew. I had told her, and everyone else in the vicinity.

“Right.” She wore a tight, smug little smile as she cleared her throat. “You did use a condom, by the way.”

Mortifying. But somehow, she still made it seem lighthearted. Probably the first woman who didn’t ridicule me into silence. The perfect woman, who had heard me explaining how she was simply too sexy and too interested in me to exist. The woman I had compared to a literal dead person.

“Oh, good,” I squeaked, “I’m glad you heard that, too.”

“Sure did. Do you want me to take off my scarf and let my head fall off?” She grabbed both ends of her scarf, tugging on them and dropping her head to the side and sticking her tongue out.

“Funny.” It actually was.

“I’ve been _dying_ to tell that joke, but I didn’t want to get a _head_ of myself.”

She was seriously the only person who could make those puns bearable. Only barely, but I gave her credit for that.

“I’m glad you’re enjoying my humiliation,” I mumbled while staring at our feet. I was afraid that if I looked her in the eyes, I’d get lost again.

“I’m just kidding. It’s flattering, really,” she reassured me. My plan to avoid looking at her didn’t work. Not only did it fail to prevent me from losing myself in her, it didn’t last long at all. In fact, I was already looking back at her when she spoke again. “I’ve never had a guy tell me that I’m otherworldly.”

“They should. You are.”

For the first time in the conversation, I had the upper hand. Her features softened so quickly at the blatant compliment; she almost looked bashful. It seemed insane to me that she wouldn’t be used to it by now, but if that were the case, I was happy to make up for all the men who had failed to tell her before.

The shyness faded quickly, or at least the appearance of it did. She was confident when she spoke next.

“Well, maybe next time I’ll show you what skills I have when I’m sober.”

“There’s more?” I asked with a dropped jaw that I hoped she would find charming and not stupid. Judging by her laugh, it was probably a mixture of the two.

“Oh yeah,” she said, and I realized it didn’t matter which it was. I just wanted to hear her laugh again.

“I’d really like that, yeah.”

“Great! Then I’ll see you around,” she concluded, swiftly turning fast enough that the wind caught her perfume. It was exactly as I remembered from when I’d woken up hugging my pillow instead of her.

Following her lead, I also turned to walk away and join my friend. But then I realized a small flaw in the plan and froze.

“Wait!” I shouted, causing several people to look up at me for the umpteenth time that morning. I didn’t care, because one of them was her. “How will I find you?”

“You have my number, Raymond.” She held up her phone, then scrunched up her face in a silly grin. “How do you think I remembered your name?”

I scrambled to pull out my phone, clicking rapidly to open the texts and receive the confirmation of her existence before she vanished from my sight forever. But sure enough, there was a text from a contact named “(Y/n).” The content was just a picture of the two of us, obviously drunk but also obviously happy. 

“Right,” I muttered, wishing I could remember more. But then I looked up and saw she was smiling back at me, and I let out a sigh of relief at the prospect of opportunities to make numerous better memories.

“It was nice seeing you!” I called out to her as I started to walk backwards away from her and almost wiped out in the middle of the sidewalk.

She shook her head, but then finally called back, “You too, _boo_.”

As she walked into the building, my brain took her absence as its first chance to decompress. I tried to sort all the feelings raging inside my heart while also trying to recall every detail of what had just happened.

Beside me, my friend let out a low, “Wow.”

“I know,” I said, thinking it needed no further explanation. He gave it, anyway.

“She really is way out of your league.”

“I know,” I repeated with a lovesick grin.

“She might be a ghost, man.”

“… I know,” I sighed. “I know.”


End file.
